1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a container for storing a stack of thin and soft sheet materials, such as tissue paper sheets, toilet paper sheets or paper towel sheets commonly used for household and hygienic uses. More particularly, the invention is directed to an improvement in sheet material dispenser means through which sheets of paper or like materials are drawn out of the container readily and smoothly without being broken during the dispensing operation by a user, whereby the capacity of the container for storing sheet materials per unit volume can be increased.
2. Related Art Statement
In general, paper sheet materials used for hygienic uses, such as tissue paper, toilet paper or paper towels, are thin and soft, and have high water absorption coefficients and low tearing strengths. such paper sheets are cut to have predetermined dimensions, folded in half, and then stacked in a container with the folded halves thereof being inserted or tucked in the folded halves of the adjacent sheets. Most of the known containers for storing such a stack of paper sheets for hygienic or like uses have discharge or dispensing ports opening on the top walls thereof. However, when a paper sheet stack is contained in such a container having a dispensing port opening on the top wall, at least a portion of the paper sheet next to the sheet which has been or is just drawn out of the container must be pulled from the container to be ready for picking by the user's fingers, the portion of the next sheet being pulled out of the container by the accompanying movement thereof with the preceding sheet. With such a construction, the height of the container or the thickness of stacked and overlaid paper sheets should be less than the width of the folded and tucked section of each sheet, when it is desired to draw and consume all of the packed sheets including the last or lowermost paper sheet in a convenient manner. For this reason, the number of paper sheets which can be packed in a single container is limited. Another disadvantage of the conventional container of this type is that failure in pulling up the portion of the next sheet to the dispensing port occurs frequently to compel the user to insert the fingers deep into the container to draw up the paper sheets laid at the lower portion of the container.
There is also known a container for packing a paper sheet stack and having a dispensing port on the bottom wall thereof. A container of this type has an advantage that all of the paper sheets including the very last sheet can be dispensed from the container without any particular difficulty, since the paper sheets move spontaneously towards the bottom of the container by gravity as they are consumed. However, in the conventional container of this type, since the weight of all sheets stacked in the container is applied on the downmost paper sheet to create excessive frictional force when the downmost paper sheet is drawn through the dispensing port, a thin and soft sheet, such as tissue paper, having only limited low mechanical strength is apt to be broken during the pull-out operation especially when a large number of sheets is contained in the packed stack. Accordingly, the number of soft and thin sheets having relatively low strengths is also limited when they are packed in a conventional container of this type.